Choose Life, Not Tobacco |
Smoking is a habit that drains your money and kills your slowly, one puff after another…. |
Smoking helps you to relax… in Death-bed |
Smoking is injurious not only to you, but for the ones around you also… Quit before it’s late |
Smoking Leaves an Unseen Scar, it fill your Insides with Toxins and Tar |
Only a fool would put his lips, at the other end of a burning fie. |
Irony is, Tobacco companies kill their Best Customers. |
You’re a Fool, if you think smoking is cool. |
Tar the Roads, not your lungs. |
Be brighter, put down the lighter. |
Put the smoke out, before it put you Out. |
Who’s going to retire on your hard-earned dollars… You or some tobacco company executive? |
A Friend in Deed won’t make you smoke that weed. |
Smokers die young, be smart, don’t start. |
Every time you light up A cigarette, you are saying that your life isn’t worth Living…. |
Don’t let being on a ventilator ultimate become, the reason you eventually quit smoking. Save lungs while you can. |
If you can’t stop smoking…. Cancer will. |
Cigarettes are like Squirrels. They are perfectly harmless until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire.

Voice of Tobacco Victims (VoTV) led a campaign for pictorial warning with Widows of 5 Tobacco Victims writing a letter to Prime Minister of India Mr. Narendra Modi. This was in continuation with the Pictorial warning that VoTV had done by sending a letter with support of 653 doctors writing to PM.

Mumbai, 8th September 2012: It is wrongly believed that pan masala is a sort of innocent bystander that has become a casualty in the nation’s war against cancer-causing tobacco. Although the Food & Drugs Administration (FDA) of 11 states have banned gutka and pan masala together in a well-reasoned way, the common man thinks that pan masala is a simple mouth-freshener that even children may safely consume. To leave a back door open for the banned gutka industry to make a re-entry in the guise of pan masala, it is being argued in many high courts that pan masalas must not be banned. On 12th September, the Bombay High Court will be hearing the petition filed by the gutka/pan masala industry, seeking to get pan masala excluded from the scope of this ban. This was reported in The Times of India today. One sincerely hopes that the public interest will prevail over commercial interest.

Pan masala is not just an innocent mixture of arecanut cuttings, food flavours and sweeteners. It is a specialized product engineered for causing addiction, and as such, it is an ingenious mix of traditional items and innovative chemicals. New formulations are constantly being developed and introduced on the market to encourage initiation and sustained use of these products, and allied products that deliver higher “highs” to addicts. Inexpensive portion sizes and packaging render these products convenient for people to buy, carry and use, and new flavourings are tried out to appeal to young and old alike. Although these products are promoted as “safe” alternatives to tobacco smoking or chewing, no pan masala is actually safe. In fact, some varieties are more addictive and more harmful than cigarettes.

The similarity in packaging and marketing of gutkha and pan masala is no accident. They all work together as a team. Pan masala initiates unwary people and gets them to set foot on the slippery slope of addiction. Gutka, khaini etc. lie in wait further down that slope.

RMD (Rasiklal Manikchand Dhariwal) Pan Masala causes cancer. It is not just a “harmless” flavoured supari. It contains several deadly carcinogens, including some that are artificially added to the ones already present in the Areca nut or Betel nut (Supari) which is the main ingredient.

How does the mystique of pan masala work? Pan masala is based on supari, i.e. arecanut or betelnut, which is a traditional item, and a part of hindu religious ceremonies. In some communities, when the bride’s father accepts the proposal made on the groom’s behalf, he invites the groom’s side to come and have paan-supari. This engagement ceremony is called the supari-taking ceremony. Although the cancer-causing effects of supari are well publicized, it is considered safe, maybe because it is considered auspicious!

And that is one reason why traditional people like Mrs Purnima Dave, aged 36, from Banswara, Rajasthan, are coming into doctors’ clinics with cancer of the mouth, head, neck and voicebox. Respectable housewives in villages and cities are less likely to indulge in vices like chewing tobacco or gutka, but they don’t think twice before eating supari or pan masala.

Supari is nearly as dangerous for pregant mothers as alcohol drinking and tobacco chewing. If taken during pregnancy, even the unborn babies are harmed by the chemicals present in supari and pan masala. Neonatal withdrawal syndrome is reported in the newborns, and arecoline — a toxic extract of areca nut or supari – is detected in the placenta and the stools of the fetus (called meconium). Arecoline stimulates the mother’s central nervous system, reducing blood flow to the fetus. The chemicals and heavy metals present in the areca nut causes abortion, premature delivery, lower birth weight and reduced birth length.

When taken by women who are trying to concieve, supari and pan masala reduces fertility and likelihood of conception. In men, pan masala ingredients damage the testes and the sperms. A study conducted by A Kumari, B N Mojidra and others at the National Institute of Occupational Health, Ahmedabad, assessed the damage caused by pan masala to the male reproductive system in mice. Swiss albino male mice were randomly divided into 7 groups receiving either standard control diet or pan masala-containing diet. Three doses (0.5%, 1.5% and 3%) of pan masala plain (PMP) as well as pan masala with tobacco (PMT) gutkha were given for a period of 6 months. Sperm count and production were significantly decreased in both PMP- and PMT-treated groups. Both gutkha as well as panmasala plain were found to cause testicular damage, plus increase in sperms with abnormal shapes.

BEWARE! PAN MASALA MAY HAVE MORE NICOTINE THAN GUTKA

The ban order by Maharashtra Food and Drugs Administration dated 19 July 2012 highlights the risk posed by Magnesium Carbonate present in pan masala, which leads to hyper magnesia, and sometimes cardiac arrest.

Even pan masala brands marketed as “tobacco-free” contain high levels of nicotine, as revealed by a study commissioned by the Ministry of Health. While gutkha, zarda and khaini are known to contain some tobacco and are sold as such (their manufacturers don’t claim zero-tobacco content), pan masala makers promote and advertise their products as “100 per cent tobacco-less”, as they are subject to review under the 1955 rules of the Prevention of Food Adulteration (PFA) Act.

But look at the reality: laboratory analysis of randomly picked pan masala brand samples by the Central Tobacco Research Institute (CTRI), Rajahmundry, Andhra Pradesh has revealed that Rajnigandha pan masala contains 2.26 gm of nicotine per 100 gm of pan masala. This was actually more than Goa 1000 Gutkha brand, which was found to have 2.04 gm of nicotine per 100 gm of the product. Manikchand’s Gutkha RMD contained 1.88 gm nicotine. Chaini Khaini contained 0.58 gm of nicotine while Raja Khaini had 1.02 gm of nicotine per 100 gm of the smokeless product.

A parallel study by the Food Research and Standardisation Lab, Ghaziabad under the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) showed that Rajnigandha pan masala contained exceptionally high nicotine levels.

In all the tested samples, pH levels were found to be carefully fine-tuned to facilitate rapid absorption of nicotine into the blood, delivering to the consumer the desired kick. The intention is clearly to make pan masalas highly addictive to one-time users and repeat-users alike.

In the words of Prakash C Gupta, Director, Healis – Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health, Navi Mumbai, “The chewing of betel quid without tobacco was not perceived as a public health problem until recently. The situation changed drastically with the advent of Pan Masala and Gutkha. These products were specifically targeted and marketed to the young. As a result, prevalence of use has increased among young individuals as has the prevalence of oral squamous fibrosis.” Combined with Indian social habits (such as traditionally offering supari or pan masala as ‘mukhwas’ or mouth-fresheners after meals), these products are deadly. Pan masala and gutka have a very high cancer burden, equalling or exceeding the cancer burden of smoking.

3 September 2012, Mumbai: Meet Rajkamal Prajapati, aged 28, who was doing a job and studying for his B.Ed. Married, with two young daughters, Rajkamal was living in a little-known town called Orai in Jalaun district, UP, until cancer turned his world upside down. Currently, Rajkamal is in Mumbai’s Tata Memorial Hospital, where large parts of his tongue and tonsils were removed on 26th August 2012. Now he faces the challenges of coping with radiation therapy and relearning to talk again. It’s a steep price to pay for having chewed gutka and smoked cigarettes for only three years!

Rajkamal Prajapati of Orai, UP

Unlike Rajkamal, Ramesh Chowdhury, a 65-year old daily-wage earner in Kolkata, had been eating khaini and smoking bidis for about four decades; his wife Savita took it as a part of life from the time she married him. He was recently diagnosed with cancer of the voicebox. Two weeks ago, a panic-stricken Savita rushed her husband to Mumbai by train, as he was barely able to breathe. On 27th August, the surgeons at Tata Memorial removed his voicebox. Ramesh now breathes from a hole in his throat, and stares at a bleak future.

Ramesh & Savita Chowdhury of Kolkata

Savita and Rajkamal have written letters to their chief ministers — Mamata Banerjee and Akhilesh Yadav — urging them to immediately ban tobacco. Scores of tobacco victims are writing to their chief ministers and parliamentarians, encouraged by Voice of Tobacco Victims, which is a nationwide network of cancer surgeons, hospitals and NGOs.

Some cancer surgeons are tired of spending their lives removing tongues, jaws, throats, voiceboxes and chest parts of tobacco addicts – creating a physically and socially handicapped person — while a profit-minded tobacco industry continues to supply the toxins that made them that way. They find it difficult to stomach the fact that while saving lives through amputations, they create thousands of crippled and dependent persons.

The surgeons are finding it difficult to quietly live with the fact that oral cancer is the biggest killer of men, accounting for 42% of all male cancer-related deaths in the country, and 18.5% of female cancer-related deaths. These percentages translate to 84,000 deaths in men and 36,000 in women from tobacco-related cancers in both urban and rural areas, according to a research paper published by leading Indian surgeons in May 2012 in The Lancet, a leading medical journal. Debunking the myth that “smokeless tobacco” is a less-harmful alternative to cigarette smoking, the study states that there are twice as many deaths from oral cancer as lung cancer.

And, since oral cancer is only one of the many killer diseases that tobacco-chewing addicts suffer from, the statistics of tobacco-related deaths and disabilities are actually many multiples of the above-mentioned death toll.

About 19,000 persons died in the Bhopal gas tragedy. Tobacco-related deaths dwarf this fugure. It is a shocking fact that gutka, pan masala and such other products create the equivalent to one Bhopal gas tragedy every couple of months, or one major air-crash every day. Far from the beautiful people like Malaika Arora and Sanjay Dutt who lend their faces to such products, what surgeons see is dead and dying people, or people whose jaw, tongue or cheeks have to be amputated to save their lives.

There is now a network of 47 medical professionals all over India who are committed to seeing that gutka, pan masala and other toxic products are taken off the streets and relegated to the history books and museums. Here are their contact details: http://tiny.cc/Anti-Tobacco-Surgeons

Cancer surgeons are now pouring their energy into campaigning for getting their states to ban such products. They are getting results. In a rare display of political will, 11 states and a Union Territory recently banned gutka and other chewing tobacco products. These are Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Bihar, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Punjab, and the union territory of Chandigarh. The Delhi administration too committed to Delhi High Court that it will take a proper decision within a few days.

Point 2.3.4 of the notification issued by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) on 1st August, 2011 says, “Product not to contain any substance which may be injurious to health: Tobacco and nicotine shall not be used as ingredients in any food products.” Hence all smokeless tobacco products such as gutka, khaini, etc stand banned. This is as per Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, and under the authority of Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, Ministry of Health.

The report submitted by the National Institute of Health and Family Welfare (NIHFW) to the Supreme Court gives evidence of various fatal diseases caused in millions of people in India by the deceptively named “smokeless tobacco”. These diseases can only be controlled by prohibiting the sale of such products. Read this report: http://tiny.cc/Report-NIHFW-SC

The gutka and pan masala manufacturers are trying to escape this ban by arguing that these products are not “food” as defined under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, and therefore, the Food Safety and Standards Act is not applicable. They contend that Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 2003 – known as COTPA – is applicable, and therefore, gutka and pan masala may be regulated under COTPA but not banned under Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006. Thankfully, this tenuous argument has failed to convince the Supreme Court. In the Godawat Pan Masala Case, the Supreme Court clearly stated that: “We are… unable to agree with the contention that pan masala or gutka does not amount to “food” within the meaning of definition in Section 2(v) of the Act.” Thus it is settled law that Gutka and Pan Masala are food products.

Of course, manufacturers and distributors of “smokeless tobacco products” may approach the judiciary to fight a last-gasp battle. However, unless and until they get a stay order from the relevant High Court, Regulation 2.3.4. is the law of the land. This means that the Food & Drugs Authority of every state is mandated to implement the ban at the earliest.

In addition to the force of law, there is the great power of moral conviction. 56 Members of Parliaments, Chief Ministers, Governors and other high-profile decision-makers have signed the pledge to curb the use of chewing tobacco, to ensure that unwary people like Rajkamal Prajapati and Ramesh Chowdhury stop becoming mutilated victims. Check it out: http://tiny.cc/Anti-Tobacco-Pledges

Deepak Kumar, a lifelong smoker of ITC’s Wills cigarettes, and Mohammad Azazur Rehman, who has smoked Pehelwan chaap bidis all his life, are now appreciating the brand choices and lifestyle choices that have made their lives so sweet! Both Deepak and Azazur come to Tata Memorial Hospital for quarterly checkups — a lifelong reminder that one must reluctantly live with the lifestyle choices that one willingly makes early in life! And so the duo use ITC Classmate Notebooks & ITC Classmate Stationery to track their dates at Tata Memorial. It’s a good idea to write ones wills early while smoking Wills, jokes Deepak, a former commissioner of Central Excise! Deepak now wears a fashionable scarf to cover that designer hole in the throat (it’s the Wills Classic look!), and he plans to walk the ramp at Wills Fashion Week 2013 as a model to show off his exquisite range of designer scarves & exclusive fashion accessories! He hopes to open a store sponsored by ITC Ltd, naturally. ITC Wills Lifestyle Stores, Organizers of Wills Fashion Week, hope you are listening? Mr Y C Deveshwar, Sir, surely, you will not disappoint an ardent fan of ITC brands, who makes it a point to stay at ITC Hotels whenever he travels?

Mohammed Azazur Rahman, an electrical engineer from Basti district of Uttar Pradesh, was forced to come to Mumbai’s Tata Memorial Hospital last month. It turned out that he was a great fan of Pehelwan brand of bidis all his life, smoking 2-3 packs per day. Today, his disfiguring oral cancer is painfully evident, but he still can’t kick the habit! He smokes 4-5 Pehelwan bidis every day.

Mohd Azazur Rahman, an electrical engineer from Basti district of Uttar Pradesh, loves Pehelwan brand bidis. He has oral cancer, but he still can’t quit the habit!

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About Us

The name “cancer” makes everyone fearful. This word is considered synonymous with death. No one would ever know the pain associated with this disease more than us who had undergone this unfortunate experience. We live under threat of re-occurrence of the disease and the fear of death always haunts us.